Don't Hug Me I'm Scared
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 Duck: "And every day's a new surprise..."
Yellow Guy: "When you're learning with us guys!" Red Guy: "And we live in an actual NIGHTMAAARE!!!" | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, often abbreviated to DHMIS, is a surreal musical horror comedy web series created by British filmmakers, Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling. It consists of six episodes, released from 29 July 2011 to 19 June 2016 through the artists' website, YouTube, and Vimeo. The series combines segments in live action, puppetry, traditional animation, and computer animation, The TV series launched on September 23, 2022.
Summary
Each episode revolves around Yellow Guy, and his father Roy Gribbleston, Red Guy, and Duck meeting one or several anthropomorphic characters, who begin a musical number related to a basic concept of day-to-day life with an upbeat melody similar to that of a nursery rhyme. As each song progresses, it becomes apparent that its moral or message is nonsensical or self-contradicting, and that the "teacher" character has ulterior or sinister motives. The climax of each episode typically involves a shock element with the use of graphic violence, and sometimes other coercive or warped themes. Later in the series, the characters begin questioning the nature of their reality and the bizarre messages of the teachers.
Why It's a Creative Color
- The concept of a horror parody from puppetry edutainment shows like Sesame Street is an interesting idea.
- Spawned some internet memes, like "Green is not a creative color" and "That's not enough time!".
- The moments before the gore and creepiness are pretty educational, which is nice.
- A bunch of well-hidden details that will make theorists interested.
- The plot twists are quite disturbing by surprise but in a good way.
- The fourth-wall break in episode 4 is creative.
- The mysteries and lore are well put together. The series is riddled to the brim with neat and creepy easter eggs and background references that make it play out like a higher-budget ARG of sorts.
- The puppets' designs are pretty creative and artsy, the titular trio the series focuses on sticks out pretty well.
- The animated segments are nice and very stylish, with each episode having an animated segment that has different styles. They all are very nice to look at.
- The songs are great and very catchy overall.
- It legitimately has a very neat and important message that criticizes the edutainment industry's practices. Examples include kids' shows promoting unhealthy food brands (episode 5), dumping important topics down for kids to get an incorrect understanding of them (episode 2), the creators pushing their religious beliefs into the show (episode 3), or the creators of the show only caring about money and dedicating their lives to it (episode 6 and the help videos demonstrate this).
- Outstanding and well-done puppetry and incredible and colorful background sets that are very appealing to look at.
- Unlike Happy Tree Friends, the gore effects in this show are surprisingly realistic and impressive too!
- Its TV series, which premiered on September 23, 2022, is just as great as the show itself.
The Only Bad Quality
- Some very disturbing scenes, even by the show's standards, like the scene in episode 2, where the main three turn into rotting corpses in a show within the show, or the one in episode 5, where Duck gets his organs eaten by a can of food.
Reception
DHMIS got an 8.2 on IMDB.
Trivia
- The creators and the people who worked on this show later worked on "The Puppets", an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball. Some backgrounds and assets in the episode were recycled from this show.
- Almost every background set was made out of plastic and cardboard.
- The three main characters don't have actual names. They're instead simply referred to by the creators and fans as Red Guy (not to be confused with the Red Guy from Cow and Chicken), Yellow Guy, and Duck.
- Duck's voice is auto-tuned, it is unknown why.
- Due to it being an indie show with a smaller budget, every episode had to have a Kickstarter campaign to be completed.
- The TV series adaptation was originally going to be premiered on September 12, 2022, but was pushed back to September 23, due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II.